Collaboration platforms (or Online collaboration systems) are virtual workspace for facilitating and optimizing communication between individuals in order to develop common works. The most widely known are Wikipedia, Wikinews, Mechanical Turk or Second Life (in its virtual object creation function), but these collaboration platforms are used increasingly for open innovation, collective invention, participative innovation, concept management, and so on. The general term collaboration platform will be used to refer to “source management software” such as Subversion or Visual SourceSafe for collective software development.
The previously mentioned “work” is to be defined as an organized assembly of specific data (i.e. coherent set of digital data of the same type (text, hypertext source or reference link, 2D or 3D image—still or animated, photography, video, computer file, computer object or online service, etc.) provided in the development of the work). It may be understood as for example article, journal, encyclopedia, idea, summary, film, event, call for tenders, feasibility study, patent, market study, business plan, development plan, consultation report, demonstrator, prototype, technical test report, prospective panel test report, etc. A work can consist of a number of steps (ideation, design, feasibility, prototyping, etc.) and a number of phases (draft, development, finishing, etc.). A work therefore is not necessarily completed, in particular when it is in the planning or development stage.
A work is the result of one or more contributions. For an author, this is contributing action, participating, helping in the production of a common work: it may be addition, deletion or modification of specific data, spelling corrections, votes or other clicks, commentary, expression of an idea, thought or service, question or response, participation in a forum, recommendation, modification of a computer program, parameterization of an administrative tool, etc.
The work is said to be collaborative when the creation involves a number of natural people, composite when a new work is incorporated with a preexisting work without the collaboration of the author of the latter, or collective when it is created on the initiative of a natural or legal person who edits, publishes and discloses it under his or her direction and name and in which the personal contribution of the various authors participating in its production are combined in the overall work for which it was developed, without it being possible to attribute to each author a separate right for the whole work produced.
To sustain development, collaboration platforms on the Internet aim at prompting the largest number of contributors (call for contribution).
That is why collaboration plateforms enable remote people to provide specific data either for free, or in exchange for compensation, i.e. remuneration provided in various forms, tangible (see after) or purely non-tangible (for example reinforcing a reputation, public recognition, renown, rating, feature, co-ownership share, user license, etc.), and so on.
The reputation, which is a common idea of the skills, talent or reliability of a social entity (individual, group or company, etc.), is particularly important in social networks (set of social entities such as individuals or social organizations connected to one another according to their belonging or social relationships: Facebook, LinkedIn, Viadeo, etc.).
If tangible, different types of compensation are known. For each type, a plurality of examples is presented:                Financial compensation            Mechanical Turk: tagging, choice of best photo, description of a product, etc.    Tutplus, GoMediaZine, Tutorial9, eHow: tutorial writing    SurveyClub, ExpressPaidSurveys: consumer tests    LegalForce: online legal advice    Squidoo, HubPages, Google Knol: opinion articles    Second Life: virtual objects    OpenAd: call for advertising ideas    Innocentive: call for ideas for product lines, viral marketing, technical solutions, etc.    OneBillionMinds: call for technical or economic solutions for social innovations    FellowForce: call for technological concepts            Electronic money            Second Life: virtual objects (linden dollars)    Wikipedia: encyclopedia (wikimoney)            Gifts            Spigit: participative innovation (rewards)            Visibility or feature            Amazon: book reviews    eBay: online curiosities dealership
Whatever the type of compensation, a major problem is how to define it, i.e. how to value what a contribution whose counterpart is the compensation represents in regard to its assessment in the commoditization of a work or a set of works. This is called the exchange value.
In many cases, the exchange value is defined before the service, on the basis of specifications or a fixed schedule. The US patent application US2009/086235 thus describes a way of how to define compensation on the basis of the contribution request, the user profile (gold/silver/bronze), characteristics of specific data (high-priority, low-quality), contribution media (email, remote data submission) and the specific data (description of one's neighborhood, photo, etc.) itself.
In other cases, this exchange value is defined when the service is delivered on the basis, for example, of:                the number of advertisements selected (clicked) by users        
The international application WO2010/053922 describes how to associate advertisements with articles, and compensate authors according to the number of clicks on these advertisements.                a content quality rating        
The US patent application US2003/014311 describes compensation to the author for a contribution based on the average ratings given by readers as well as the number of single accesses to said contribution by said readers.
The international application WO2010/053922 describes a classifier module enabling an article quality score to be defined, on the basis of:                the conformity of the page design with a template        the number of concepts in a page, evaluated according to a predetermined concept library        the number of working links        the number of misspelled words        the average weight of previous scores or the change of same                    the technical evaluation of the first response to a contest: OpenAd, Innocentive, OneBillionMinds, FellowForceThe US patent application US2009/299760 thus describes a computer system enabling, if the solution is accepted, compensation to the researcher, to be paid after transfer of intellectual property rights relating to this solution.                        reviews by a network of Internet users        
The US patent application US2009/199104 thus describes an idea merit indicator, based on the number of users having provided comments and reviews and the reputation of these users. This reputation is itself calculated on the basis of the number of contributions of a user, the number of comments and reviews received or transmitted, its performance on the prediction markets (Online marketplace organizing bets relating to a proposal, for example: “Will the next president of the United States be Republican?” or sporting event results. These bets are generally subject to ratings), and so on. This idea of merit indicator results in compensation to the author, for example in the form of batches or credits.
Similarly, the US patent application US2009/271481 describes a computer tool so that ideas are rated by Internet users in order to make the best ones visible to manufacturers or investors.
The AMAZON website describes reviews using the well known question “was this comment useful?”, which will then make it possible to valuate the best comment authors.
The EBAY website implements a contributor (vendor) rating system based on the number of positive comments: The rating can be composite, i.e. the contributor is rated according to a plurality of criteria, in this case: object conforming to the description, communication, delivery time, shipping fees, etc.
The international application WO2009/076555 proposes compensation indexed on a reputation score defined primarily on the basis of reviews, but also on the renown of the author, the number of publications by the author, the novelty of these publications, plagiarism, the amount of time the author has been registered and the number of links to the content.
However, in all of the cases mentioned, the exchange value is associated with a contribution for which it is possible to attribute a separate right. However, the arrangement of contributions for a work produced by means of a collaboration platform may become too complex to establish this distinction of rights in an operational manner.
This technical problem is regularly raised in a legal controversy relating to the notion of collective work. The French Intellectual Property Code characterizes it in particular when “the personal contribution of the various authors participating in its production are combined in the overall work for which it was developed, without it being possible to attribute to each author a separate right for the whole work produced. The impossibility of attribution mentioned in this text is technical (feasibility, operation or economic character). Historically, the legislator introduced this notion for dictionaries and encyclopedias. Today, it is conventionally used for multimedia works, collective works (advertising clip, bijou) or even on the basis of data (SIRENE directory). However, it presents problems of application and legal contradictions (see GAUDRAT and MASSE report, 2000; see http://www.droitsdauteur.culture.gouv.fr/gaudrat.pdf and DE BROGLIE report, 2000; see http://www.droitsdauteur.culture.gouv.fr/rapportbroglie.pdf).
To make it easier to understand this problem, we will use the example of Wikipedia. This is the largest free global encyclopedia, produced by the contributions of some hundreds of thousands of volunteer Internet users. Each contributor can provide his or her personal touch to any article. To encourage contributions to Wikipedia, some contributors have implemented electronic money, Wikimoney, making their compensation possible. The principle is as follows: each contributor having produced more than 200 edits receives an initial amount of 20 units. This money can be offered to other contributors in order to encourage them to contribute. The transfer from account to account is performed by editing the “Wikibank” page. This system has fallen into disuse due to its operational complexity.
Google Knol is a competitor of Wikipedia, but provides financial compensation to authors. It is possible for an author to authorize other contributors to modify his or her text (“open collaboration model”). However, Google Knol does not manage the sharing of compensation between the different contributors, as explained in the terms of service: “4.2 The initial author of a knol, i.e. the person at the origin of the creation of said knol, is, by default, the “Owner” thereof [ . . . ] 4.3 All of the distributions and all of the payments resulting from the AdSense monetization of a knol will be addressed to the Owner of said knol without taking into account any real or potential joint ownership of the copyright or any private contract signed between the members of the writing Team.” Thus, Google Knol does not provide compensation for contributors in consideration of another type of operational complexity.
Therefore, there is a need for a new method for determining the right compensation for each contribution to a collective work produced by means of a collaboration platform.